I should add that in the interest of peace and goodwill, I extend an offer to both Mike and Gavin to make their grievances heard…but only on the condition that we make a good effort to avoid misrepresentation and misreading of the other side’s intentions.
> On Aug 17, 2015, at 9:37 AM, Eric Lombrozo <elombr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> On Aug 17, 2015, at 6:34 AM, NxtChg via bitcoin-dev >> <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >> <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>> wrote: >> >> Great, so how about you go tell theymos to stop censoring XT posts and >> banning the other side on /r/Bitcoin? >> >> Let users decide what Bitcoin is or isn't. > > FWIW, > > I don’t think what theymos did is very constructive.I understand his > position…but it only hurts the cause, unfortunately - the PR battle is not > the same thing as a discussion on technical merits. He hurts the PR battle > and plays into Mike’s hand by doing that. The actual underlying issue > actually has little to do with block size - it has to do with Mike and Gavin > feeling that the core devs are being obstructionist. > > Regardless of the technical merits of XT, the fact that we’ve never done a > hard fork before, not even for things some other devs have wanted…and not due > to any malice on anyone’s part but because simply that’s just the nature of > decentralized consensus with well-defined settlement guarantees…this is the > problem - Mike and Gavin think they’re somehow special and their fork should > be pushed while the rest of us resist pushing our own controversial pet ideas > because we want civility and understand that at this stage in Bitcoin’s > development trying to fork the blockchain over highly divisive issues is > counterproductive and destructive. > > But the fact of the matter is that in the PR battle, arguments against the > fork actually play into Mike’s hand, and that’s the problem. > > The whole block size thing is too nuanced and too easily spun simplistically. > It’s too easy to spin resistance to bigger blocks (even though the resistance > is actually much more towards untested hardforking mechanisms and serious > security concerns) as “obstructionism” and it’s too easy to spin bigger > blocks as “scalability” because most of the people can’t tell the fucking > difference. > > The fact is most of the people don’t really understand the fundamental issue > and are taking sides based on charismatic leadership and authority which is > actually entirely counter to the spirit of decentralized consensus. It’s > beyond ironic. > > If you guys want to win the PR battle, the key is to make it clear that you > are not obstructionist and are giving everyone equal treatment…Bitcoin was > designed such that changing the rules is *hard* and this is a feature. > Bitcoin simply does not have a reliable and tested hard forking mechanism…and > a hard fork for such a politically divisive issue will almost certainly lead > to a lack of cooperation and refusal to work together out of spite. All of us > would like to be able to process more transactions on the network. It’s not a > matter of whether we think higher capacity is a bad thing - it’s more that > some of us are concerned that Bitcoin is not sufficiently mature to be able > to handle such a schism with so much hostility. > > Let’s face it, folks - from a PR standpoint, the block size issue is > irrelevant. Nobody really understands it except for a handful of people - > I’ve tried to explain it, I’ve even written articles about it - but most > people just don’t get it. Most people don’t really get scalability either - > they seem to think that scalability is just doing the same thing you’ve > always done manyfold. > > Block size is an especially dangerous issue politically because it’s one of > those that requires deep understanding yet superficially sounds really > simple. It’s perfect Dunning-Kruger bait. > > So let’s be a little smarter about this.
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